Paper trails | FIFA loot vanishes in Third World mire
Copenhagen | Jens Sejer Andersen, director of Play the Game, pens an eloquent letter to FIFA after the governing body’s reply to queries about FIFA’s relationship with Burma. Andersen is pleased that Sepp Blatter had intervened in the case of arrested journalist Zaw Thet Htwe (see Nov 7), but argues for more transparency from FIFA and more accountability among its members:
With regards to our question about how GOAL-funds were used in Myanmar, we are surprised that FIFA puts its trust into a financial report from a local auditing company in a state where military dictators influence football as well as financial affairs and where critical activities could have fatal consequences for all citizens—including auditors.
Journalist Andrew Jennings asks FIFA for better use of its website.
Why shouldn’t they put the minutes of executive meetings on their website? Why not add an audio link. Let’s hear them working, as they claim, for the Good of the Game.
Finally, as part of FIFA-bashing night, Antiguan journalist Ian “Magic” Hughes details the cozy dealings among Blatter, CONCACAF chief Jack Warner and Antiguan Paul Greene. Hughes and others in the East West Indies country had asked for an audit trail following a $400,000 FIFA grant for construction of an Antiguan football headquarters that apparently was never built.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has campaigned to relocate the remains of goalkeeper-cum-existentialist Albert Camus from their resting place in Lourmarin. 